Abstract

My purpose in this study is to examine a number of
Australian novels which portray love relationships between
men and women, and to suggest some reasons for the quality of
these relationships as fictionally depicted. Traditionally,
Australian culture has been male dominated, therefore,
central to the culture are stereotypes of the masculine and
the feminine. Sexism in Australia and the gender stereotypes
which legitimize it have been recognised generally both by
historians and sociologists. Miriam Dixson and Anne Summers
have presented strong analyses of the effects of sexism in
Australian society, both past and present; even a nonfeminist
historian such as Manning Clark notes not only male dominance,
but the development of social humiliations to which men subject women. Manning Clark traces a possible
connection between this male dominance and the
disproportionate number of male to female convicts. Dixson
argues that the male convicts demeaned their female
ounterparts unconsciously as a means of compensating for
their own lowly positions. This, she argues, resulted in
the majority of women in early generations of white
settlement internalizing a negative self-image as the
defining trait of a sense of self, in contrast to the
potential positive 'real' self which her humanist
psychological orientation assumes. She attributes the main
problem to the men who settled in Australia as convicts,
rejects, and negative and resentful administrators. Likewise,
Summers has posed a socialist-feminist analysis to identify
the means of women's oppression in a patriarchal society.
She also argues that the problem lies with male power and
female colonization. But both writers recognise that women
accept their inferior status within patriarchy unconsciously,
and conform to patriarchal stereotypes of female sexuality.
Kay Schaffer has restated this case, though from the
viewpoint of more recent developments of social theory which reject the assumption of a 'real' self. Nevertheless,
these and others recognize that sexism has existed in
Australian culture since white settlement.
This sexism is shown in the depiction of love relationships in Australian fiction. However, I shall make a
distinction between writing that depicts sexism critically as
an element of Australian society/culture and writing that is
informed by sexism in its depiction of love relationships.
However, this is not a firm and definitive way of
distinguishing between works, because they may contain
elements of both factors.